


The Things We Do For Love

by Lue4028



Series: Sociopath [1]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Gen, M/M, Multi, Pining Sherlock
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-03-15
Updated: 2017-04-11
Packaged: 2018-10-05 11:24:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,288
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10306148
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lue4028/pseuds/Lue4028
Summary: When the idea for this first came to me, I recoiled in horror. No- it's not possible, I thought- but the moment I realized that I knew it had to be done.Sherlock encounters Gabriel, the second member of A.G.R.A., who is intent on wiping out Mary and everyone who knew of her existence. Confusing John as Sherlock's boyfriend, Gabriel uses John as leverage so that Sherlock will give up Mary's whereabouts... and things rapidly degenerate from there.





	1. Chapter 1

He’s begun to feel the effects of delirium after being submerged underwater past the two-minute mark. There’s the recurring feeling he’s losing his grip of reality, that his mind is slipping away. His vision is eclipsed at the corners, zeroing in on the distortions of light dancing across the surface. Everything is losing its vividness. His memory starts to loop, trying to remember what it was he was reaching for. In the moments he does remember, it always seems to evade his grasp, falling just out of reach because of some move his assailant makes to overpower him. As he gasps for air, he finds himself coking on water instead, his fingers trying to pry away the strangle hold around his neck.  
  
In the water, where sound is magnified, he becomes distantly aware of a clicking noise against the crashing sounds of the violent underwater struggle. The sound is slow and consistent, decidedly unhurried. As the muscle fatigue starts to overtake him and his resistance begins to taper away, the sound grows louder into a tap, tap, tap— like footsteps drawing closer. It’s as he’s blacking out that in the most distant reaches of his mind he can hear the sound of a gun break the silence.  
  
The impression of an outstretched hand appears like a shadow against the filtering rays and grips his shoulder, pulling him upward.  
  
“Not dead yet, I hope?” are the first words to greet his ears as he comes to. Hazily, he registers the figure of a man standing over him, silhouetted against the overhead LED lights. He's dressed in all-black, night raid gear. His face, however, is uncovered, revealing a striking head of blond hair that is in stark contrast to the rest of his sombre attire.  
  
The next thing he notices is what’s become of his attacker, lying over sideways on the white tile with the contents of his skull blown out. It takes him a moment to piece it together, seeing the semiautomatic in the man’s left hand.  
  
The regularly oiled handgun in combination with the twin-strapped shoulder holsters he has been in the habit of slipping under a jacket suggests something along the lines of a government agent or freelance assassin. Judging by the current state of affairs, Sherlock is more inclined toward the latter.  
  
“Good,” the man says, gazing down at him with piqued interest, “I couldn’t help but overhear— You mentioned Rose?” he asks in a generic dialect.  
  
Sherlock shakes his head in confusion. Something about the man doesn’t add up. He must be at least some kind of double agent, seeing that his accent is British but his gun is government-issued American. Although the way he speaks is almost unnaturally perfect, giving the impression that it was learned— that English is a second language. And that makes him what? Triple?  
  
“What do you want with her?” Sherlock asks, though there still a disconnect between him and the words, like he's hearing his voice echo back from the other end of a telephone.  
  
The assassin smiles in a way that, despite being fond and familiar, would later haunt him.  
  
“I’m an old friend,” he replies. Despite being seemingly benign, it triggers some uneasiness in Sherlock’s mind, although, at the moment he can’t remember why.  
  
The alarm begins to sound and the man looks away, seeing the overhead lights go out and the emergency uplighters around the perimeter of the pool beam on.  
  
Sherlock tries to pull himself together in the fogginess, but can’t shake the lurid, dreamlike quality of it all in the chaos of blaring alarms and stobing lights.  
  
“I’ll be back for you, Sherlock Holmes,” he says with a brief glance that Sherlock can only describe as playful amusement. He vanishes through rear corridor, leaving Sherlock to piece together what exactly just happened and why.

 

He returns to his flat with a wet cat look on his face that sends the alarmed Mrs. Hudson scuttling away. Upon entering his flat, he sheds his blazer and whips off the necktie that’d been irritating him since this morning, throwing it on the backrest of the desk chair as like it’s something out of a thrift store dumpster and not Prada. It’s as he’s unbuttoning his collar that he catches a glance of himself in the hallway mirror. He rings his fingers around his throat, taking stock of the bruising around his neck. The imprints are particularly intriguing to see on himself- the classic sort of markings you see immortalized on the corpses of cut-and-dry murder cases.

  
He doesn’t sleep that night. There is something of an uneasiness on his mind following the events that had transpired at the pool. He has this irksome feeling he’s forgotten something important— something difficult to retrieve, brief, elusive, tugging at the edges of his recall. It's something he heard in the liminal space between wakefulness and unconsciousness.

  
He’s unable to unravel what it is. It’s too far gone, a key tossed away into the depths of the subconscious where everything is in disarray. When he finally lies down after pacing a half marathon, it plagues him endlessly, a gnawing feeling in the back of his mind, flitting around the edges of his conscious thoughts.

  
He hadn’t anticipated the presence of a second intruder on the scene. His memories of the man are disorganized- incomplete- given the state of hypoxia he had been in. But some combination of impressions and feelings, like a patchwork cloth, leaves him feeling ill at ease. Despite that the man had saved him- no that wasn't right- He hadn't been there to save him.

He had been there for an all-together different, more sinister reason— His object had been to put a bullet in the deceased's brain from the get-go. He should have left Sherlock for dead, had he not mentioned Mary’s name. That alone was compelling enough to make him pull him out the water.

Once he was himself again, the man had vanished, like something he had imagined. Lestrade had been telling him maybe he should see a doctor, but his first instinct was to tell him he didn’t want John anywhere near this. His next thought was that was a spectacularly odd reaction to have, given he didn't have the faintest idea what John or Mary, for that matter, had to do with any of this. He was hardly sure witch way was up and wich was down at that point.

There had been an exchange of words before the final sound of the gun. He had heard what would be the final words of their would-be murder suspect, now lying in a body bag at the morgue. But even when he manages to piece it together, the words were barely recognizable, distorted in the depths of the pool where sound traveled slow and in strange, garbled variations.

  
“Gabriel?” he had said. There was something about the way he had recognized the interloper, as if in awe. Like he was a dead man walking, the specter of a friend he used to know.

  
“Hello Ajay," his murderer had said, "And, goodbye.” Followed by the shot of a gun. Then the impression of an outstretched hand appeared like a shadow against the filtering light and griped his shoulder, pulling him upward.

  
Sherlock starts up to sitting, his mind barreling forward. They knew each other. Gabriel was familiar to him- an _old friend._ And the fact that Ajay had had a USB drive with the initials A-G-R-A on it- there was something troubling about that. It was the beginnings of a pattern- something vague, something just starting the take form, something he’s just beginning to grasp. A for Ajay, G for Gabriel, R for Rose.

  
Sherlock looks ominously down at the silver, sharpied USB drive clenched in his hand.

Who was the final A? He can’t afford not to know now. The full picture is coming into focus and it's too dangerous not to follow up on.

  
He slots the memory drive into the USB port of his laptop. The drive is password protected, encrypted, and poised to self-destruct, multiple login attempts not enabled. Hovering his fingers above the keyboard, he eventually settles on  _Alex_.

A window opens with the contents of the drive, scrolling down to the base of a litany of files. His bandwidth spikes, which means the USB is transmitting something- reporting that it's been accessed, how, by who, and where. He’s counting the seconds. The longer he spends on accessing the disk, the greater the danger of being tracked and his location pinpointed.

  
Skipping over the respective data files on Ajay Farhad, Gabriel Lange, and Rose Morstan, he finds the file for Alexander Ivanov, head of operations. He scans over the material under his name, which appears to be a rap sheet meant for collateral, when he comes across his picture. He stills, eyes glued to the screen, searching his face.

  
He’s running up the staircase in his mind palace, past iron railings and marble floors. He bursts into the drawing room on the second floor, where he pulls out file cabinet with case files dating back to 2007. There, on October 9th, 2007, is a murder victim shot to death in a Battersea parking lot. In the case file is Anderson’s forensics report, portraying the splitting image of Alexander under the name of John Doe. Bullets recovered from the body indicate the murder weapon is a .44 Magnum Desert Eagle- the very same Gabriel was carrying.

It's plain and simple process of elimination, as to who Gabriel is going to kill next. Assassins killing assassins. Just lovely. 

He ejects the USB drive, but it still seems to be transmitting. He examines the device and frowns at it in annoyance, creating crease lines that Mycroft thankfully isn’t here to nag about.

He bolts for the door, grabbing his coat, but when he pulls open the door he reveals someone standing in the passageway behind it, smiling.

“You have something of mine,” Gabriel says, inviting himself in.

 


	2. Chapter 2

It starts with the little things. A missing file, a mislabeled corpse. Trifles, little details apparently no one cares about but that are actually everything.

Once sensation returns to his fingertips, he gropes around on the floor for his phone, which has coincidentally fallen on the floor just out of reach. His fingers meet the familiar feel of his iPhone, he picks it up and speed dials Greg. The tone on the other end indicates the line is busy. He raps his fingers on the floor and dials again, glowering at the ceiling. He gets the answering machine, which suggests he leave a message. He hangs up and redials until Greg is forced to either take his call or endure the continuous assault on his eardrums as the phone rings in the background with the persistence of a debt collection agency.

“I need the full ballistics report on a case from 2011," Sherlock tells Greg when he picks up, "Fax it to me. I need to confirm something.” 

“ _Now?_ ” Greg drawls unenthusiastically, suggesting he is preoccupied with his day time job, which largely consists of failing to catch criminals and paperwork. 

“Yes, _now_ ,” Sherlock replies blandly, as though it weren’t obvious.

Greg covers the receiver to ask the person sobbing in the chair across from him to hold on for a second. Sherlock can tell by their jingly earrings that the person they came to fill out a missing report for is now long gone, their remains stuffed into a curbside sewer drain, but that’s not the reason he called.

Greg wedges the handset in the crook of his neck and keys in his login credentials into the criminal records database. After clicking around for a few minutes Greg says, “You wanted homicide case seven-eight-three-four?” 

“No, seven-eight-three- _five_.” 

“There is no seven-eight-three-five.” 

Sherlock finds himself marveling at the ineptitude of the average Homo sapien. “Come on, Lestrade. The number that follows seventy-eight thirty-four,  _seventy-eight thirty-five_.” 

“There’s no case file for that number. It’s not in evidence lock-up,” Greg says.

There’s a pause on the other end of the line as Sherlock mulls it over. “We have to go down and check,” he replies.

“Now?” 

“Yes _now_. Tell her that her girlfriend died somewhere in the process of being drowned, cut into potable pieces, and struck with a blunt object to the head, then meet me at the gate,” he says curtly then hangs up. 

Mrs. Hudson sees him coming down the stairs and asks him if he wants a cup of tea. He explains to her in clipped tones that he neither requires nor desires one.

“Well!” she huffs at him as he’s bolting out the door. 

When he meets Greg at the evidence locker, the inspector tries to remind him that he’s not his lapdog, which he is. Passing the meshed security gate, they turn on the lights to a dilapidated vault containing racks of boxes that have been collecting dust since 1997. 

Sherlock starts scanning aisles but Greg remains standing in the doorway, looking disgruntled.

“She heard you, you know,” he says begrudgingly.

“I fail to see how that is any of my concern,” he says, not ungluing his eyes from the array of disorganized boxes. Surely there must be a method to this madness.

“Couldn’t you exercise just a little sensitivity? I’m not asking for much, just a modicum would be nice,” he says, “I mean, how do you think that made me look?”

“I don’t suppose you heard me the first time when I said it’s none of my concern?”

“What do you imagine that’s like? Hearing the person you love most is dead over the phone? Pleasant you think?”

Sherlock sighs and rolls his eyes. He doesn’t have time for this.

“Well since she was crying I thought I’d give her something to actually cry about,” he remarks as he moves between aisles. Greg gawks at him, which he nearly misses in the process of hunting down the rogue evidence box.

 “I’m sure you’ll patch it up. Tell her something encouraging- like there are plenty of fish in the sea.. or something,” he says awkwardly.

He resumes his work, despite the fact that Greg looks vaguely horrified by him.

When they finally find the position on the rack where the case box ought to be, they lift the lid to an unpromising blank box that looks like it’s just sitting there as a placeholder.

“There. Empty. Alright?” Greg declares epicly, confirming that their expedition has been none other than a glorified waste of time, dragging them all the way down three subterranean levels and leaving them none the wiser for it.

“How did this happen?” Sherlock backtracks, rubbing his temple, “Evidence doesn’t just disappear.”

“Maybe you got the year wrong? Or the case number?” Greg suggests, which Sherlock sweeps out of the realm of possibility and casts aside with an indignant “No” and “No, do I look like I got the year wrong?” casting out his hand in a look-who-you’re-talking-to fashion. He turns away again, thinking it over.

 “How can you not remember?” he turns back around to face Greg, “October 9, 2007 at 15:24 a John Doe was pulled from the river near Battersea powerhouse, one shot to the head, no personal effects other than some wet matches and a short-circuited USB drive.”

 “What, do you expect me to remember every single John Doe?” Greg laughs dryly, but then stills when he sees the humorless look on Sherlock’s face.

Greg remembering this singular event was his last hope; he can’t connect the cases with hard evidence if one of the cases is missing, or according to new Scotland yard, doesn’t even exist.

It begins to dawn on him— a gradual realization that the threads he thought he had firmly within his grasp are slipping slowly from his fingers.

“Tell me you at least got the autopsy report from yesterday,” Sherlock asks, trying to salvage the situation.

“The autopsy report for what?”

“For the body,” Sherlock says but Greg doesn’t seem to be following, “From yesterday.”

“What body, Sherlock?”

“At the crime scene. There was a body next to the pool,” he insists, but Greg still seems to have no idea what he’s talking about, “He was _shot_ right in front of me—“

He stops himself before he gets too worked up. He turns away and runs a hand through his hair, trying to recollect himself.

He had been, needless to say, confused and disoriented in the time the police took to arrive on scene. His statement has some credibility issues. Not only is it possible what he saw didn’t happen, it’s more believable.

The only problem with that is it’s all too convenient to be coincidence.

 “Are you sure you’re alright?” Greg asks, genuinely concerned, however the only response he gets is the backend of the door.

Sherlock has taken his queue to run over to the medical examiner’s office, only to discover he’s too late. There’s no record of Ajay’s body anywhere. After searching the coroner’s records to no avail, he takes the elevator down to the morgue and starts unzipping the body bags of all the latest arrivals at random, including one that was in the delicate process of being identified, causing the family of the deceased a premature shock. Eventually Molly gets called down because of complaints that Sherlock is wreaking havoc.

“Sherlock, what are you doing?” Molly interrupts, just as Sherlock is about to completely lose his temper and start dumping bodies in the furnace.

“There was a body that came in yesterday. It should be here—“ he says distractedly, searching the examination room for something he might have missed. He turns around like a dog chasing its tail, the mirror-like walls, cabinets, and tables scintillating and sterile, revealing nothing to him other than his own reflection.

“Do you need the body now? I kind of had a thing—” she says awkwardly from the stairwell.

“A thing?” Sherlock cocks his head in feigned ignorance. He is fully aware she had a lunch date, with Scottish physician scientist who has an unusual penchant for ice lollies but the benefit of being himself and not the unfortunate, stood-up fellow in the cafeteria is that he gets priority.

“It was uh.. nevermind. At what time was it?” she asks, checking the clipboard on the wall.

“Around 2AM this morning.”

“Hm.”

“What?”

“There’s nothing in the database at that time but the coroner on call filled out an investigation form around then,” she says, tapping the latest entry on the clipboard spreadsheet. “We might of put it in storage. It should be here—” she says going to the freezer. She looks up the chamber her colleague wrote down and slides it open. Not surprisingly it’s empty.

"This is a potential murder investigation and you're missing the body?" Sherlock asks, having a very hard time wrapping his head around the fact that they can’t locate a body that fell less than 24 hours ago.

"I don't know- sometimes, things get mixed up," she offers as some sort of explanation, shrugging her shoulders. He looks at her scathingly. She seems to think a missing corpse is perfectly normal, like it came back to life and just walked out of there of its own accord.

They proceed to go through the entire rack of bodies, but the corpse is no where to be found. She tells him it’ll turn up in a weak attempt to raise his spirits, but he knows better. He’s forced to reconcile with the sad reality of the fact all it takes to make a body disappear is a coroner who’s not a coroner and a good mop.

 


End file.
